Remember The Daily or The Magazine? Or, more recently, Star Touch? Remember all those other things publishers tried to do with the iPad? That went well.

In hindsight, it was a waste, and Jobs led them all on a costly detour. While the publishing companies focused on the iPad, people were slowly starting to embrace smartphones. About 300 million smartphones were sold worldwide in 2010, according to research firm IDC, and Apple sold 7.5 million iPads in the first few months the device was for sale. Last year, Apple sold 44 million iPads, and people bought about 1.5 billion smartphones. The iPad is important, but it never became the ubiquitous, world-changing computer that Jobs pitched in 2010.